Category: publishing

Budget Woes Force University Presses To Show Their Worth

“Chancellor Michael Martin doesn’t question the prestige the Louisiana State University Press brings to his school, with Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction and poetry, tomes on Southern history and culture and other noted works to its credit. What it doesn’t bring in is revenue, and like cash-strapped colleges across the country, LSU is getting tired of propping up its press.”

Misjudged: What’s Wrong With Court-Ordered Authorship

A judge last week sentenced former pharmaceutical executive Andrew G. Bodnar to write a book about his misdeeds. “We do see the possibility of justice in this sentence — if Dr. Bodnar hates to write. But it feels like an invitation to insincerity. In fact, it feels a little like asking an adolescent boy to explain, in front of his friends, why telling a lie is bad, bad, bad.” And there’s no sidestepping the issue of vanity.

A Book By Any Other Name Wouldn’t Sell As Sweet

The title of the new book “Womenomics” rather blatantly plays on the best-selling “Freakonomics,” but it’s an old trick. “Capitalizing on popular titles has a long pedigree in the publishing industry. A well-turned phrase can give birth to dozens of offspring. Edward Gibbon’s monumental ‘History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ first published in 1776, has inspired variants for more than two centuries.”

The Future Of Books?

“Every other form of media that’s gone digital has been transformed by its audience. Whenever a newspaper story or TV clip or blog post or white paper goes online, readers and viewers begin commenting about it on blogs, snipping their favorite sections, passing them along. The only reason the same thing doesn’t happen to books is that they’re locked into ink on paper. Release them, and you release the crowd.”